


End of the Road

by fictionalcandie



Category: American Idol RPF
Genre: Community: kradamadness, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-02-25
Updated: 2011-02-25
Packaged: 2017-10-20 07:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,358
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/210481
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fictionalcandie/pseuds/fictionalcandie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adam’s been waiting, stuck in limbo, for Kris to make up his mind. Then the unthinkable happens.</p>
            </blockquote>





	End of the Road

It happens in the very early hours of Sunday morning, or so he’s told.

Adam doesn’t get the call until Monday morning, as he’s leaving to grab a late breakfast on his way to the studio.

Adam barely has his cheerful “Hello?” out before he hears Kim’s tired “Kristopher’s in the hospital.”

It’s what Adam imagines it would feel like if he stepped off the curb into the path of a bus that’s speeding by in front of him.

Adam doesn’t hear a lot after that, just fragments here and there. ‘ _Coma_ ’ sticks in his head as he’s heading back inside, and ‘ _car accident_ ’ while he’s shoving things in a bag, and ‘ _ice on the road_ ’ (and he has to stop a second at that and make sure he’s not hyperventilating because Kim definitely doesn’t need to hear that), and then finally the name of the hospital and Kris’s room number.

“I’m on my way,” says Adam, already fumbling with his keys, because his panicked brain says that driving for hours would be better than sitting in an airport or on a plane with nothing to do while he knows that Kris is _unconscious in a hospital_ , somewhere that Adam _isn’t_.

“Oh, Adam.” Kim sighs; Adam wonders if she got any sleep at all last night, if she’s even with Kris or stuck back in Arkansas. “You don’t need to do that, honey. I know you’re busy in LA right now. They don’t even expect him to wake up for—”

“I’m on my way,” Adam repeats, and hangs up because he can drive faster if he’s not on the phone.

He can apologize later. And anyway, he figures Kim will understand.

—

 _“Seriously, Kris, you actually ran away, just because I said—”_

 _“It’s not running. At least, not for good, Adam. I’m coming back, I just need…”_

 _“Anything. Anything you want, I’ll give it to you, Kris, I’ll—”_

 _“I know. That’s why I had to get away.”_

—

It’s afternoon when Adam reaches the tiny little nowhere town near the cabin Kris had rented when he ran away from LA saying that he needed time. Adam can’t remember what the place is called, and he’s barely aware which _state_ it’s in, but that’s what his iPhone is for — and besides, the minute Kris had shared his new address, he’d memorized the Mapquest directions from his front door to Kris’s just in case there was ever some kind of electrical blackout that hit everywhere at the same time (or the apocalypse hit, or he lost his cell, or any one of a hundred thousand disasters he’d thought of) — and that gets Adam to the hospital. The visitor’s directory and sheer, anxious determination gets him the rest of the way.

Kris looks like shit.

It’s the only thing Adam can take in, at first, frozen in the doorway to Kris’s room. He stands there for what feels like a very long time, half in and half out, but he can’t seem to make his feet move.

The hospital bed is huge, or maybe it’s just Kris looking tinier than usual. His skin is pale (except where Adam can see vivid bruises, and little cuts), and there’s a thick white gauze bandage covering most of his head. His eyes are closed, eyelids looking more like chalky purple smudges than anything else.

Adam wants to throw up. Then he wants to crawl into that bed and carefully — god, he’d have to be so careful — curl around that fragile-looking body and protect it from anything else that could possibly happen to it.

It’s minutes, Adam has no idea how many, later that Kim looks up and sees him.

“Adam!” she says, rising from her chair but not letting go of Kris’s hand. She sounds surprised, like she didn’t actually expect Adam to show up or at least not this quickly (he is not going to think about the number of blatant traffic violations that occurred on the trip here), but she looks grateful, and exhausted to the bone.

“How long have you been here?” Adam asks, putting off the questions that he really wants to ask because he’s not sure he wants to hear the answers to them.

He crosses to Kris’s side; his fingers twitch toward Kris’s other hand, but he snatches them back before they can get very far.

He has no idea what Kris has told Kim, how much he’s got the right to, here in front of Kris’s mother. He’d like to ask Kris — how far have they actually come, outside of Adam’s head? how ready is Kris, really? what’s Adam allowed to say and do in front of other people? — but if he could ask then he wouldn’t need to because Kris would be _awake_.

“I caught the first flight after they called me,” says Kim. She sighs and collapses back into the chair like her strings have been cut. “Neil’s coming out tonight, and Daniel the day after. He wanted to move up his flight but after I talked to the doctors, I told him not to.”

Adam nods, because that makes sense; Daniel had been getting ready to come out and spend a couple of weeks with his brother anyway. Kris had been on the phone joking to Adam about it what feels like just hours ago, on Saturday night, talking about how it was finally his turn to play the bachelor hosting his brother’s desperate vacation from the land of matrimony. Adam had laughed, because he was supposed to, and reminded Kris that _he_ could escape to Adam’s house in LA if he needed to, because he couldn’t not.

He’d been trying not to push Kris, though lately it had been getting harder and harder to keep everything in check, with Kris all warm and flirty and affectionate on the other end of the line. But Kris hadn’t seemed to mind, because he’d laughed and said he’d come hide under Adam’s bed, or maybe in it, if he got sick of his brother. Adam had gone to bed with a hard-on that wouldn’t quit and a heart pounding _almostalmostalmost_.

Then Kris had gotten in his car and tried to drive somewhere in the middle of the night and slid across a sheet of black ice into a tree (and fuck, Adam wishes he couldn’t see that so clearly in his head, it keeps playing over and over and he feels like his chest won’t work and he can’t _breathe_ ), and Adam would’ve had no idea if Kim hadn’t needed something to do with herself and decided to start calling Kris’s friends.

Adam is going to kill Kris for doing this to him.

If Kris ever wakes up.

“When’s he going to wake up?” Adam asks, because the thoughts going through his mind are completely unacceptable.

Kim’s head drops a little. “… they aren’t sure.”

Adam’s throat closes up. His legs don’t exactly give out on him, but they come close to it, and it’s a good thing there’s a chair behind him. He sits down hard, clasping his hands tightly between his knees so he doesn’t reach again for Kris’s.

—

 _“You bought a **what**?”_

 _“You heard me. I can totally show it to you, if you don’t believe me.”_

 _“Would this require me to come back to LA?”_

 _“Oh, no. Hang on. I’m sending you a picture.”_

 _“Okay. I’ve got…it… Oh my God, **Adam**! My eyes!”_

—

Adam has to pay attention to his cell phone eventually, because it keeps beeping at him and Kim starts flinching at each high-pitched electronic ping. Instead of listening to his messages or reading his texts (the number increased dramatically about two hours after Adam left LA; he suspects that’s about when news of Kris’s accident started making the rounds, which tells him all he needs to know about whether he wants to read or listen to the ones _after_ that), Adam just calls a few people, letting them know that he won’t be available today like he was supposed to, and no not tomorrow either, or the day after, and actually he’ll just give them a call when he’s back in town.

Adam pauses, once that’s done, and considers his phone, then the room and Kim.

He clears his throat.

Kim shifts just enough to look across at him. It’s been almost an hour since Adam arrived, but she looks like she would have just kept right on sitting there at her son’s side, still and weary, and it kind of makes Adam want to bawl his eyes out.

“I’m gonna—” he runs out of words and lifts his phone in explanation. “I’ll be back.”

Kim just nods at him.

Adam wraps his hand tight around the phone, hears the plastic creak as his knuckles go white, and leaves the room to call his mother.

—

 _“I bet you’re living in that shirt. You are, aren’t you?”_

 _“I am not! I have lots of shirts, Adam, you’re totally maligning my wardrobe, here.”_

 _“Oh, yeah? Are these ‘lots of shirts’ an excuse to avoid showering, I wonder?”_

 _“I have no idea what you’re talking about.”_

 _“… which means that they totally are. I bet you haven’t showered the whole week and a half you’ve been up there, have you? Just lying around being nasty in your clean shirts.”_

 _“Shut up! You make it sound awful.”_

 _“Oh, it is awful. I’m so on to you, Kris Allen.”_

 _“I wish.”_

—

“Oh my _god_ ,” says Leila, as soon as Adam’s done explaining what happened. “And you’re— Is Kim holding up okay?”

“She’s…” Adam starts, then trails off, leaning back against the nondescript hospital wall. He has no idea what to say; telling Leila that Kris’s mother looks like _she_ was the one to hit a tree, instead of her son, sounds distinctly impolitic. “Tired?”

“I’m coming out there,” announces Leila.

Adam startles. “What? Mom, you—”

“Send me the address,” Leila insists. “I’m coming out there.”

Adam pulls his phone away from his ear long enough to type in the hospital’s address and Kris’s room number and send it to her. He lifts the phone back up and says, “Seriously, Mom, you don’t need to—”

“Don’t you dare try to talk me out of it,” says Leila, in the same tone she used to use to make him clean his room. “I’m coming out there and I’m going to keep you two company until your boy wakes up. It’s my choice and there’s nothing you can do to stop me.”

Tears get stuck somewhere in the back of Adam’s throat, and he can’t really get his words to work, so he makes an assenting noise. (Deep down inside he’s always going to be a five-year-old boy and having his mommy there to hold his hand will make everything just a little better. Especially because he can’t hold Kris’s, damn it.)

His mother’s voice softens. “I’ll be there soon, honey. Go tell Kim.”

“Okay,” he croaks.

She hangs up on him.

Adam has the fleeting thought that maybe it’s genetic.

He goes back to Kris’s room.

—

 _“I’m going to laugh if you get food poisoning from that.”_

 _“Fuck you, Kristopher, this stuff is delicious.”_

 _“Seriously. **Laugh**.”_

 _“Seriously. Delicious!”_

 _“Do you not have a keeper, or something? Is that what this is, a plea for help?”_

 _“I don’t know. You want to apply for the job?”_

 _“Not if you’re going to start ralphing. I’m not down with vomit, Adam.”_

 _“I solemnly promise to always aim away from you while puking.”_

 _“Now I know it must be love.”_

—

Leila arrives without fuss or ceremony. She walks right into the room and over to Kim, wrapping her up in the hug that Adam hadn’t been able to give her because he was too busy aiming every last scrap of his attention on Kris. (He feels like if he looks away for a second, Kris will disappear; he knows it’s stupid, but he can’t help it. Kris already left him once.)

Leila is armed with coffee and soul-deep empathy, and Kim topples like a house of cards under the wave of her concern and comfort.

Adam notices it peripherally, but beyond the infinitesimally tiny surge of relief he felt when Leila walked in, he’s just glad he’s no longer the only one in here with Kris’s mother. It makes him feel less like an interloper.

He wants Kris to wake up and tell him (at least, he hopes Kris— he’s _mostly sure_ Kris would tell him) that he’s being stupid, that of course Adam belongs there, that he _wants_ Adam there, that he is glad Adam wouldn’t dream of being anywhere else no matter what.

He wants Kris to _wake up_.

—

 _“H’lo?”_

 _“Go outside.”_

 _“… what?”_

 _“Go outside, Kris.”_

 _“I was asleep! Do you have any idea what time it is?”_

 _“Middle of the night. Go outside.”_

 _“Okay, okay, I’m outside. Why am I outside? It’s freezing.”_

 _“Look up.”_

 _“I’m looking up. Why am I looking up?”_

 _“The moon. It’s…”_

 _“It’s gorgeous. Why are you—”_

 _“I just wanted to, I don’t know. Share it. With you.”_

 _“Adam…”_

 _“Just shut up and look at the damn moon, Kris.”_

 _“Okay.”_

—

Word gets out, eventually. Of course it does. Paparazzi and fans start to converge on the little hospital (it’s surely more excitement than this town has seen in, oh, _ever_ ), but by then Allison and half Kris’s band have all shown up so there’s nothing untoward to read into Adam’s being there.

Adam wishes like fuck there were, because then maybe he could demand to stay in the room without looking like a complete jackass, when Allison and Andrew and Cale are all bent over the hospital bed, hands clasped in Kris’s and each other’s and arms around Kim where they can reach.

Adam hates everyone who can touch Kris without worrying that it might be mis-(or correctly, he doesn’t even _know_ at this point)-construed.

He means to go down to the cafeteria, but makes it only as far as the hallway outside Kris’s room, slumping down to sit on the floor next Kris’s door, his back against the wall and his knees drawn up.

He thinks, even if he’s not allowed to act like he’s Kris’s, he’s still allowed to be distraught.

And screw anyone who doesn’t agree.

—

 _“So, I’ve been thinking—”_

 _“You sure that’s safe?”_

 _“Oh, very funny.”_

 _“I’m just saying, I’m not there to keep you out of trouble, Adam. Thinking might not be the best idea you ever had.”_

 _“I hope you realize how ridiculous that statement is.”_

 _“Totally ridiculous. Anyway, you said you were thinking?”_

 _“Yeah.”_

 _“Well?”_

 _“I was thinking I— Just. I fucking miss you, Kris.”_

—

Leila brings Adam a styrofoam cup filled with coffee, but she doesn’t join him on the floor or try to get him to move. Just hands him the coffee, squeezes his shoulder, drops a kiss on the top of his head, and goes back in to sit with Kim.

After a little while, Kris’s bandmates leave his room and shuffle off toward the cafeteria, throwing commiserating little glances at Adam as they pass. Adam wants to throw his lukewarm coffee in their faces and burst into tears, because these men got to _touch_ Kris, but they’re walking away, leaving the floor like there isn’t a giant invisible chain of need and worry and _fear_ wrapped around their chests holding them there and squeezing tighter the farther away they try to get. They’re upset, yes, but they don’t _feel_ it like Adam does and they’re all _looking_ at him right now like he’s exactly like them but that couldn’t be further from the truth.

God, Adam really hopes he’s not exactly like them as far as Kris is concerned.

Allison comes out after the guys, but she doesn’t walk away. She curls up at Adam’s side, pulling the untouched coffee away from him so that she can slip her hand into his. She drops her forehead to his shoulder, and he both hears and feels her unsteady deep breath, almost a sob. It goes straight to his gut, and he wants to throw up almost as badly as he wants to cry.

“Hey,” he croaks, and squeezes her hand.

“He’s gonna wake up, right?” she whispers brokenly. “He’s gonna be okay?”

“He _will_ ,” Adam promises, because if Kris _doesn’t_ , if Kris _isn’t_ , then it won’t matter that Adam was wrong. None of it will matter.

Adam _refuses_ to consider any possible outcome other than Kris being all right.

—

 _“How long have I been gone?”_

 _“Too long.”_

 _“That’s not actually a descriptive period of time, Adam.”_

 _“You want a more descriptive period of time? Really? Do you? Because I’ve been keeping track.”_

 _“You—”_

 _“I’ve been counting, Kristopher. Like a fourteen-year-old girl. This is what you’ve reduced me to.”_

 _“I’m sorry.”_

 _“I know you are.”_

 _“… so how long **have** I been gone?”_

 _“I hate you.”_

 _“We both know that’s not true.”_

—

Adam is dozing when Kris’s father arrives.

Leila and Allison finally found yet another chair and put it next to Kris’s bed for Adam, he thinks mostly because they got tired of his legs tripping them up every time they passed him in the hall. He’s slumped over in it, leaning backwards to make sure he doesn’t accidently tip forward and fall on Kris, and he wakes up with a start as someone new enters the room.

Neil Allen pauses in the doorway, staring at Kris and looking much like Adam imagines he must’ve. But after a second, Neil offers some kind of whispered appeal to God, and crosses immediately to stand next to Kim, one arm going around her and the other reaching out to rest his hand, tentatively, on Kris’s chest.

Adam’s heart stutters in his chest, and for just an instant, all his desperate pleadings for Kris to wake up, are completely unselfish.

—

 _“Your mama called me today, Kris.”_

 _“Oh. Yeah? What’d she have to say?”_

 _“She said since you’re out of town she’s not sure whether she’s still supposed to send your cookie-care-package to you, or if we were dropping the pretext and she should just send it right to me.”_

 _“… so, she’s totally seen through us, then.”_

 _“Yep.”_

 _“What’d you tell her?”_

 _“That if she sent my cookies to anyone else I would hunt them down.”_

—

Sometime in the middle of the night, Kim’s phone rings, and even if she hadn’t said Daniel’s name when she answered, Adam would have recognized Kris’s brother’s voice as the loud one on the other end of the line. Adam can’t tell what Daniel’s saying, but he hears the anxiousness and worry, probably exacerbated by the distance.

Kim makes soothing sounds for a while, Neil’s hand resting comfortingly on her shoulder as she repeats everything the doctors have said in the last dozen hours. Daniel seems to calm down some — at least, Adam can’t hear him anymore — when suddenly Kim’s tone changes.

“No,” she says, a little sternly. Then, after a pause, “Don’t go there right now.”

There’s another, longer pause, and Daniel doesn’t seem to be taking Kim’s hint.

“ _Daniel_.”

Kim’s voice lowers but Adam can still hear as she hisses, “Just what is your problem with Adam being here?”

Adam jerks his head up. Kim throws a glance at him and stands to back away a little, dropping her voice even more. Neil is watching with an unreadable look on his face.

Kris’s brother thinks Adam shouldn’t be there.

Adam’s insides shrivel a little.

He lurches to his feet blindly and leaves Kris’s room, Neil’s questioning voice following him. He almost drops to sit on the floor outside, as he’d done before, but it’s too close (not close enough, never close enough). He keeps going, until he gets to a little family lounge somewhere else in the ward, where he sinks into a stiff plastic armchair.

He puts his head between his knees and tries to remember how to breathe, his head spinning, thoughts a constant loop of _Kris oh please god Kris_ , and _shouldn’t be here don’t belong_ , and _can’t go can’t ever go won’t leave Kris_.

Sometime later, Adam becomes aware of someone carding fingers comfortingly through his hair. He absorbs it for a moment, letting it relax him a little, then looks up, expecting to see Leila or Allison sitting next to him. It’s neither.

It’s Kim.

Adam startles.

Kim smiles gently, and Adam doesn’t know what she sees on his face but the next thing she does is sigh, “Oh, sweetheart, no. Daniel’s just being a grumpy idiot. Ignore him.”

Adam half-smiles, uncertainly. “Kim, if you would rather I wasn’t—”

“No,” Kim says again. “Adam, you have been one of Kris’s best friends for years, and regardless of anything else, that’s more than enough to ensure you’re welcome here.”

Adam feels a rush of mingled relief and longing. He’s here as Kris’s _friend_. That ought to be enough for him.

“Thank you,” he says quietly, because it’s _not_ enough but it’s not Kim’s fault.

“You’re welcome, honey.”

Kim’s hand drops to rub small, slow circles on his back, so Adam lifts his arm over her head and wraps it around her shoulders. She gives a satisfied nod.

“Now, then,” she says. “I know you want to be anywhere else about as much as I do, but we don’t do Kris or anybody else any good staying in that room losing our minds watching him sleep.”

Adam hiccups a laugh. Kim smiles at him again.

“So let’s you and me just sit ourselves out here a while. Neil or your mama’ll come get us the minute there’s a change.”

“Okay,” Adam manages around the lump in his throat, after a moment. He nods. “Okay. Let’s… do that.”

—

 _“My espresso machine hates me.”_

 _“Uh. Okay?”_

 _“No, seriously, it **hates** me.”_

 _“It’s an inanimate object, Adam.”_

 _“That doesn’t mean it can’t hate me!”_

 _“You do realize that it’s totally not actually alive, right?”_

 _“Sure, it **wants** us to think that.”_

 _“All right, okay, I’ll bite. Why do you think it hates you.”_

 _“I moved it to the counter, on the other side of the fridge, and now it refuses to turn on. It’s horrible! I need my espresso, you **know** how I need my espresso.”_

 _“Are you sure it’s plugged in?”_

 _“Of course I’m sure it’s plugged in! What kind of question is that, Kris? I checked three times.”_

 _“… Adam.”_

 _“Yes? What?”_

 _“Did you forget to call the electrician to fix that outlet, the one on the other side of the fridge that doesn’t work?”_

 _“… oh.”_

 _“ **Adam**.”_

 _“Um. Oops?”_

—

There is no change.

Kim and Adam return to Kris’s room, slipping in quietly. Kris hasn’t woken up, of course he hasn’t. He hasn’t so much as moved.

It’s very, very late, almost early by now, and lines of strain are starting to show on everyone’s faces — Adam’s sure he’d see them on his own, too, if he bothered looking in a mirror — but no-one suggests they leave and find somewhere to get some rest.

Adam’s glad; he’s not sure he _could_ rest, and more than sure that he wouldn’t be able to do so any farther away from Kris than the walls of the hospital. And he’s sure he can’t be the only one who feels that way.

Adam’s chair (and it _is_ his, no matter what anyone else thinks) is still empty, so he settles in and makes himself as comfortable as he can while Kris is unreachable a few feet away. It’s even worse than those first couple of days of no contact, after Adam lost control of his mouth and told Kris how much he wanted him (and not just that but how he would do anything to make Kris his, how all he wanted was Kris to want him too), before Kris called him and told him not to worry, when all he knew was that he’d messed up and Kris wasn’t in LA anymore.

Adam used to think there was _nothing_ which could _possibly_ be worse than that feeling.

He wishes he still didn’t know how wrong he was.

—

 _“I think I should redecorate. Do you think I should redecorate?”_

 _“Not if it involves faux-crocodile skin again.”_

 _“You’re a philistine, Kris.”_

 _“Uh-huh. What are you talking about redecorating, anyway?”_

 _“I haven’t decided yet. My kitchen, maybe?”_

 _“Definitely no faux-crocodile skin, then.”_

 _“I don’t know, it might make for some edgy stool cushions.”_

 _“‘Edgy’ is not the point of cushions, Adam. Actually, it’s, like, the **opposite** of the point.”_

 _“But don’t you think it would look—”_

 _“No, I do not think it would look. In fact, if you take any faux-crocodile other than your boots anywhere near that kitchen, I am never cooking for you ever again.”_

 _“Now that’s just mean. It’s **my** kitchen.”_

 _“But you pretty much never use it unless I’m there.”_

 _“Why do you have to have a point?”_

 _“Because I’m a smart guy. Also, you totally love my pointiness.”_

 _“Hanging up on you now.”_

—

Adam is the first to notice something is happening.

He knows he’s the first, because he lifts his head the instant one of the machines attached to Kris makes an extra, out of place beep, and no-on else has reacted. Neil and Kim are on the other side of Kris’s bed, talking quietly with each other, and Leila’s across the room, trying to sleep on the one, tiny, supremely uncomfortable sofa. Everyone else — Allison and Kris’s bandmates and other friends — aren’t in the room which means Adam doesn’t have the energy to spare wondering where they are or what they’re doing. Especially not right _now_.

There’s a second, out of rhythm blip.

Adam’s on his feet while the others are still registering what they just heard.

“Kris,” he says, breathless with hope, fear and a thousand nameless things.

Kris’s eyelids twitch, and the machines go nuts.

Adam’s numb with shock, and it’s the only reason that the rapidly appearing nurses manage to herd him out with Kim, Neil and Leila.

Kris is either waking up… or dying.

—

 _“Hey. I didn’t wake you, did I?”_

 _“No, but you’re aware it’s midnight, right?”_

 _“Yep. Totally aware.”_

 _“And you’re calling me this late because…?”_

 _“It’s a very special day today. Tomorrow. The day that starts after midnight.”_

 _“Oh, is it.”_

 _“It is. And there’s something I wanted to make sure I got to be the first to say, even though I’m… not **there**.”_

 _“And what would that be?”_

 _“You know what.”_

 _“Tell me anyway.”_

 _“Happy Birthday, Adam.”_

—

In the professional medical opinion of the hospital staff, Kris is waking up. They’ve taken the tube out of his throat and they’ve reduced the amount of something-or-other (painkillers?) in his IV and — they have more to say but Adam doesn’t hear a lot after they announce that they expect Kris to wake within an hour.

Kim is crying softly, hands clasped in front of her mouth and low murmurs of “Thank you, God, thank you, God, thank you, God,” leaving her lips steadily. Neil’s right there with her, one arm around her waist and the other cradling the side of her head as he leans his forehead against her temple, shiny trails down his cheeks.

Leila, Cale and the rest wear relief like a tangible thing, and Allison makes a loud, choking sound like a hastily stifled wail of joy.

Adam just stares, noticing everyone else’s reactions, but without one of his own, because he suspects that if he moves or speaks he’ll break entirely.

Kris is _waking up_.

For the first time in what feels like _days_ , Adam feels like singing.

—

 _“Don’t hang up.”_

 _“Mmm… wha?”_

 _“Don’t hang up, okay?”_

 _“Kris? Are you— Is everything—”_

 _“No, no, man, I already told you, everything’s fine.”_

 _“Then what—”_

 _“It’s just… You’re falling asleep.”_

 _“I’m not—”_

 _“I know you are. I can **hear** you.”_

 _“… right. So, you want…?”_

 _“Adam. Just…”_

 _“What, Kris? Anything. Whatever it is.”_

 _“Go to sleep, okay? Just… Don’t hang up on me.”_

—

It’s less than half an hour, from warning to waking.

Adam is one of the lucky few in the room, more because he walks in and just doesn’t even consider the possibility that anyone might keep him out, than by selection process.

Kris is waking up, and Adam’s damn well going to watch him do it, even if he does stand back by the wall in case maybe Kris doesn’t want to see him first thing.

Turns out, Adam is an idiot.

There’s the tiniest of increases in the speed of the machines’ noises, and Kris’s eyes flutter open. He looks up at his mother, then his father, then toward the other side of the room and—

“Adam,” he croaks, his hand lifting feebly, barely an inch off the bed.

Adam is across the room and dropping to his knees by the bed in a heartbeat, snatching Kris’s hand from the air with both of his own. It doesn’t matter what anyone else in the room thinks, not anymore, because Kris opened his eyes and he reached out for Adam, and if Kris wants him there he’ll _be_ there no matter how many noises of surprise their moms or Kris’s dad make.

Finally, finally getting his skin against Kris’s, warm and _awake_ , is like heaven.

He hasn’t touched Kris in months, and it’s been torture, but these last twenty hours, with Kris asleep and so far beyond Adam’s reach even when he was only a foot away, has been something even worse. The relief of just being able to _feel_ that Kris is alive, is there, is _safe_ ; responding to the pressure of Kris’s fingers curling and clinging by tightening his own around them, and _knowing_ that Kris is awake, is enough to bring tears to Adam’s eyes, like nothing else has been able to.

“Oh, god, _Kris_ ,” gasps Adam, and buries his face in their joined hands.

—

 _“Did you know I’ve always been attracted to you?”_

 _“You… Are you drunk, Allen?”_

 _“No! Yes. Maybe? Heh.”_

 _“It’s eleven in the morning.”_

 _“Five o’clock somewhere.”_

 _“Right. So, what’s driven you to drink at eleven in the morning?”_

 _“You have. God, you drive me to **everything** , Adam. Sometimes I feel like I can’t think, can’t even breathe, while you’re around. Even when you’re not.”_

 _“Kris—”_

 _“It’s true. You just **do** things to me. You always have. Even when you shouldn’t. One of my first thoughts when I met you was ‘I’d bet he would look hot pushing me against that wall over there’.”_

 _“I don’t even know what to say to you right now. Why are you telling me this, Kris?”_

 _“I still think you’d look hot pushing me against the wall.”_

—

“Did you really think I’d leave you?” Kris asks, later, when there’s only Adam in the room with him, perched on the edge of the bed, their fingers curled tightly together.

“You already did once,” Adam points out.

Kris pulls a face, mouth turning down and eyes going regretful. “That wasn’t for _real_ , though.”

“Felt real to me,” says Adam.

“But I always knew I was coming back, to you,” argues Kris. He tugs a little on Adam’s hand, urging him closer. “I was just… adjusting.”

“Well, next time you need to adjust, could you maybe not do it in the middle of nowhere?” Adam bends and presses his face to Kris’s shoulder. “Maybe choose somewhere that never, ever gets ice. On roads or otherwise.”

Kris rasps a laugh, and his other hand comes up to stroke Adam’s neck. “Don’t worry, baby. There’s not gonna be a next time. I’m as adjusted as I need to be.”

Adam pulls back, just a little. He’s pleased when Kris’s hand doesn’t drop. “Oh, yeah?” he says, hopefully.

“Yeah. When it… when I… The accident. I, uh, I was actually coming, to tell you that.” Adam’s heart stops and Kris grins at him, brilliant in the midst of all his injuries. “Kris Allen’s new setting: Happily in love with Adam Lambert.”

And he doesn’t even care that Kris’s mouth tastes grossly of hospital morning breath, because Adam finally gets to kiss him.

**Author's Note:**

> Written for [this prompt](http://kradamadness.dreamwidth.org/43100.html?thread=4765020#cmt4765020) at kradamadness. Can also be read [here](http://kradamadness.dreamwidth.org/49471.html) on DW.


End file.
